Monday, April 3, 2017

It falls to Christian leaders everywhere to work and advocate for their co-religionists in the Middle East.

Trudging around the ruined Church of St. Addai, in the empty Christian town of Karemlash, I saw clearly where radical Islamic extremism leads. This was only days before the attack on Westminster in London on March 22. With broken glass underfoot and the walls of the Church blackened after ISIS firebombed it, perhaps the most powerful symbol I came across in Karemlash was the defaced Cross. Everywhere, in all the churches and monasteries I visited, the Cross was defaced, scratched out, broken, or pierced with bullet holes.

ISIS had spray-painted the message “the Cross will be broken” on the walls of the rectory, and the pastor’s office door was booby-trapped, to kill him when he returned. As I walked around the Christian cemetery, it was clear to me that the followers of the Prophet had dug up the Christian graves. In one instance, I was told, they had beheaded one of the corpses. In the sacristy of the church, they had dug up the grave of one of the priests and thrown his body away. Even in death, the persecuted Christians of Iraq were not safe.